With a one in two chance of an Oscar nomination, Filipino Australian animator Robertino Zambrano has a nervous month ahead. His film “Love In the Time Of March Madness,” a story about a very tall woman struggling on the dating scene, has been shortlisted among 9 others vying for an Academy Award nomination for best short animation.
“It’s crazy,” Zambrano says. “It’s very surreal.”
Zambrano co-directed the short with former American college basketball player Melissa Johnson, who has called it a dark comedy about her dating life as “a woman who hit 6’4″ in 8th grade.”
The film is contending for an Oscar — with the five nominees to be announced this month — in a category won by Australian Adam Elliott’s Harvie Krumpet and Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing in the past 12 years.
Zambrano, 32, was living in New York when a mutual friend introduced him to Johnson, a writer who makes basketball documentaries.
“She had originally written an essay on the same topic,” he says. “Our friend had advised her to turn it into an animation.
“She had never worked in animation before so it was a natural match. I read her script and it immediately clicked so we started working on it together.”
Born in the Philippines before moving to Sydney’s north-western suburbs as a child, Zambrano studied design at the University of Technology, Sydney, then continued with animation while working for advertising agencies.
He originally saw Love In the Time Of March Madness as a YouTube video that might take six months to make.
“A few months into the development stages, I said to Melissa, ‘Let’s just have a crack at doing this properly. ‘A six-month project turned into a three-year project and thank god that we decided to do that.”
The film has screened at more than 20 festivals — Zambrano lost track — before making the Oscar’s shortlist.
“I’ve seen a few of the other films on the shortlist and they are amazing pieces of work,” he says. “I just feel humbled to be in the same list as those other filmmakers but it’s something worth celebrating for sure.”
The Oscar nominations will be announced on January 14.
Zambrano is considering organising a late-night party with some of the other animators.
“If we’re not going to get nominated, at least we’ll celebrate the run the film has had in an intimate way,” he says.
In 2013 Zambrano founded a boutique studio practice KAPWA Studioworks as an outlet to create films, commercial work, and to launch miscellaneous crackpot schemes. His film work has won some awards including Best Online Short at the Tribeca Film Festival. ? (Sydney Morning Herald)